Rick Rides
With only 78 made, getting to ride a Series A Rapide is a rare treat. Rick was lucky enough to put one to the test – so is it really the ‘Snarling Beast’ of legend?
It seems to me, as I swing Arthur Farrow’s Vincent left and right though the twisty roads of his leafy neighbourhood, that everything is all relative. I mean, while CB’s sister titles are busily discussing whether the latest superbikes really need 180bhp or whether something ‘slower’ is good enough, here am I riding a pre-war superbike that, on paper at least, has less power than today’s commuters. So why am I grinning like a fool and how can this experience be so damned thrilling?!
Speed and bhp have become a bit theoretical in our speed-surveillance-dominated society – but on the Rapide, as soon as you open the throttle, theory goes out of the window. You don’t need to check the ticking needle on the Vincent’s Smith’s Chronometric speedo to know how fast you’re going – who cares? The bike is pouring out shovel loads of that same hang-onto-the-bars thrill that etched your first ever ride so deeply into memory.
The Vincent is small and light for a 1000cc bike – and girder forks always add to the impression of minimalism and olde worlde-ness. It leads you into a false sense of security – but it’s the delivery that makes the power what it is. However the Vincent’s figures stack up on paper, the impulse from those twin pint-pot pistons hits you like the pounding of a slave galley drummer’s biceps, the engine surging forward and dragging everything else along with it. It feels like the bike is intentionally luring you to find a big road where you can really let it go...
And that is really where it all started. Vincent HRD was located at Stevenage, on what was then Britain’s principal artery – The Great North Road. It’s a location synonymous with mile-eating performance – and that suited company founder Philip Vincent just fine, high speed performance being his guiding star. As a young engineer in the 1920s, Vincent’s head had bristled with ideas to improve motorcycles. The decade had seen bikes evolve from primitive and rickety to fast and effective, but Vincent deplored what he saw as the stagnation of design that, among other flaws, meant most bikes still had no rear suspension. He had designed his own system of triangulated rear fork while still a student, but it was the acquisition of TT hero Howard Davies’ bankrupt HRD company in 1928 that enabled Vincent to realise hi
